now i lay me down to sleep
by psquare
Summary: AU post 1.18. Sam and Dean are immortal now. Yeah. It's that simple, and that complicated.


AU after 1.18: _Something Wicked_. References events that've happened s2 through s5.

**Warnings: **Vague general series spoilers, some swearing. AND GUYS. This is very dark. Torture, violence, references to suicide and suicidal tendencies are contained within.

_**now i lay me down to sleep**_

It all starts in Fitchburg, Wisconsin.

The shtriga's bent over Sam, sucking his essence or his life force or what the hell ever, and Dean's getting there, he _is_—he's a little woozy from being thrown across the room and his gun's disappeared beneath the bed, but he's got this covered, okay? It's a few more seconds before he's grabbed the gun and jumped to his feet, and he shouts a breathless, "Sammy!" before emptying an entire clip into the old hag's head.

She collapses to the floor and melts and seeps through the cracks in the floorboards like so much rainwater. Dean's panting in the silence that follows, and he says, "That was something, eh, Sammy?"

Sam doesn't answer; in fact, he's still staring up at the ceiling, mouth frozen open, and it would be almost comical if Dean weren't terrified enough to be shitting his pants, because _Sammy, no_. He shouts and he shakes Sam, fingers digging bruises into his shoulders, but Sam's limp and unresponsive, and his eyes—his _eyes_ are still staring at Dean, through, beyond, and there are so many voices bouncing around in between Dean's ears and they all sound like Dad, so disappointed, so disappointed because Sam's gone, gone, _gone_—

They end up in the hospital without Dean really understanding what's going on. The doctors are baffled that Sam's in the predicament that all the other kids miraculously recovered from—he's put through every conceivable scan and test. Sam's lifted and rolled in and rolled out, pliant like Dean and Dad could never make him be, and there are tubes and needles everywhere and everyday they take one more syringe-full of blood (_we want to rule out as many possibilities out as we can, mr. winchester_) and tape a tiny piece of gauze to the puncture site until Dean thinks Sam's going to covered with them, like little post-it notes going, _i hope you haven't forgotten that you've failed everything your life has ever stood for, dean_.

A week in, Sam gets a fever; a day later, Dean's back from a coffee run, and he finds out that Sam's been shifted to the ICU, his kidneys have shut down, and will Dean please sign this consent form for dialysis?

Dean can't sit by Sam's side this time; he waits outside the ICU, tossing and catching his mobile phone, thinking _I'm so sorry, Dad, Sam's dying,_ and almost calling; except a craven part of him starts thinking about how he would feel if Dad did show up at Sam's deathbed when he couldn't be bothered to come to Dean's, and he tosses the phone again.

The next day he hears a loud, "DEAN, WHAT THE FUCK?" resounding through the ICU, and he barrels through nurses and harried interns to find Sam sitting up on his bed, fingering the tube that's freakin' going into his neck, confused but so very, very healthy.

Dean grins and grins and says, "About fucking time, little brother."

* * *

><p>So, okay, maybe it <em>starts <em>in Fitchburg, but it isn't until they're hunting a wendigo in Washington state that Dean understands what's going on. The wendigo rips his head clean off his shoulders—there's a flash of tearing pain, then nothing. At least, until he wakes up and the wendigo is a smouldering pile of ash and Sam's off to the side, doing a very painful combination of retching and sobbing.

Dean struggles to his feet and shuffles to his brother. Sam turns, face wet and lips stained with vomit, and he brings up his gun so damn fast Dean can't help but feel proud.

"Not my brother," Sam growls, clicking back the safety, and his eyes are almost black beneath those ridiculous bangs.

"It's me, Sammy," Dean says, looking down the barrel of the gun with a wide smile, "it's really me."

Sam frowns, shakes his head. "No. Dean's de—Dean was just decapitated. _I know what I saw_," he says, his voice twisting in the end, raw and bitter.

"Sam. You remember Wisconsin?"

"I don't care—"

"Dude." Dean throws his head back and laughs. "We're _immortal._"

Sam actually does shoot him then, but Dean just keeps laughing.

* * *

><p>They're both a little reckless for a few days after that—hunting's suddenly a heck of a lot easier when you get the 'risk of dying' thing out of the way. It even pays off for a while: they finish things quicker, save more people than they used to, and that keeps Sam happy.<p>

(_one day,_ he says sometimes, _one day we may never wake up_, and he says it with a smile that should probably unnerve Dean, but just makes him smile along instead.)

Then Dad shows up, and in between killing vampires (_what the actual hell,_ Dean thinks, _what's next, leprechauns?_) and tracking down the Colt, they haven't had time to fill John in about their new… conditions. It isn't until they're fleeing from the Yellow-Eyed Demon and John's bleeding all over the front seat and Dean's decidedly _not_ dying in the back, that Dean goes, "Dad, I really think you ought to know that—"

A storm of steel and glass sweeps through them just then, and by the time Dean's pulled what seems like half the windshield out of his chest and extricated himself from the wreckage of the Impala, Sam's already standing at the other side—at Dad's door.

Dean goes to stand next to him, and there's Dad, pinned to the seat, twisted metal rods going through his heart and his guts. His neck's twisted toward them and there's blood dribbling off his chin and his eyes are empty like Sam's had been in Wisconsin, staring, staring at Dean—

_No_.

"Did I do this? Oh god, oh god, I'm calling 911, oh god, I'm so sorry—"

_No._

"Dean, I—I think he's—"

_No_.

* * *

><p>A year later, Jake Talley stabs Sam in the back and opens the Devil's Gate.<p>

Sam wakes up in a derelict old cabin a day later. Dean offers him a slice of pizza and says, "We've got work to do, brother."

The cheese melts on Sam's fingers, and he just _stares_ blankly. Dean follows his line of sight to the weapons he's laid out on the table to clean. "It's a demon army that Yellow Eyes let out into the world today, Sam," he says. "And who better to tackle them than a couple of indestructible hunters, eh?"

And Sam, who hasn't had a bite to eat in over two days, turns away and vomits.

* * *

><p>A demon captures Dean one day, ties to him to a rack, arms stretched high above his head.<p>

"I've heard about you, Dean," the demon says, dragging a knife across his bare chest, drawing a thin line of blood in its wake. "About the interesting things you do now." He abruptly stabs it into Dean's side, and Dean throws his head back and screams.

Over the next three hours, the demon cuts out his organs, one by one, and shows it to him—and waits until the organ's regenerated and Dean's conscious before he starts again. The corners of the room are littered with pieces of Dean's heart, lungs, liver, gut, standing like icebergs in pools of blood. The demon never laughs, never taunts, and yet Dean feels humiliated.

(_this is you, dean winchester. this is what you are, and this is all you will ever be._)

The demon's hand is buried in Dean's chest cavity when Sam bursts in and shoots it in the head. "Dean!" Sam says, running towards him, but Dean can't breathe, hasn't been able to breathe in a while now, and everything goes dark.

When he wakes up, he's off the rack and in Sam's lap, blood soaking into their skin, their clothes and sliding between their fingers, and Sam's crying like Dean sometimes hears him doing in the bathroom when he thinks no one's around, great big sobs like there's nothing and no one in the world left to live for or love, and Dean thinks, _Sammy_.

_Sammy, shut up_.

* * *

><p>"I'm just saying," Sam says, "that we really, really need to start studying what happened to us—you remember the Faith Healer, right? Roy LeGrange?"<p>

Dean grunts, pretending to be interested in whatever crappy infomercial is playing on TV.

"What is this is the same kind of deal? What if, every time, we cheat death, somebody else's dying in our place?"

"For fuck's sake, Sam." Dean rolls his eyes. "I'm pretty sure a reaper's got nothing to do with this."

"This isn't _natural_, Dean."

"… says the man who's spent practically his whole life in the supernatural."

Sam sighs, closes his laptop very, very carefully, and clasps his hands in his lap. "Dean. Did you—make a deal?"

Dean looks up sharply. "What the fuck are you implying, Sam?"

"Look. I'm just saying—what we have, immortality or whatever? Some being with some serious mojo must've been involved, and you don't get something this powerful and this specific without some kind of contract, so—"

"You think I made a deal. For immortality." Dean turns the TV off, slowly, deliberately, and gets to his feet. "You _actually_ think I'd be stupid enough to make a deal with a monster, just so that I can live forever?"

Sam sighs again, shakes his head. "That's not what I meant. Dean, listen—"

Dean cuts him off by slamming him against the wall and wrapping his hand around his throat. "Do you _want _to die, Sam? Huh? Is that how bad you want it?"

"Yes," Sam says, swallowing. It's a small _yes_, weak and strangled and straining between Dean's fingers squeezing Sam's throat, but it's all Dean needs to hear.

"Fine," he says, snaps Sam's neck in a blur of motion, then lets him fall to the ground. He gets back on his bed and switches on the TV; he's still watching an hour later, when Sam gets up and crawls into his own bed. Neither of them say a word.

* * *

><p>A year later, Jake Talley jumps into the Cage, taking Lucifer with him, and saves the world.<p>

Dean's passed out, drunk, on the motel bed.

Sam sits and sharpens his knife, and he sharpens until the whetstone's stained with his blood, and he looks at his brother, and he keeps sharpening his knife.

* * *

><p>It's been five years of trying to find ways to die and five more of trying to find ways to live. Now they're in another anonymous motel room, and Dean's stuffing clothes into a duffel while Sam's sitting on the other bed.<p>

"You ready, Sam?"

Sam's shaved his head now—he keeps cycling through hairstyles and clothes like he's desperate for _some_thing about him to change—and he fists empty air on both sides of his skull, like he's still got those ridiculously long tresses. His knuckles are flecked with blood, and he makes a low, keening noise: _i can't_, Sam's saying. _ican'tican'ti__**can't**__—_

"Yeah, that's what I thought," Dean says, zipping his duffel closed. "C'mon, let's get back on the road."

He walks out the door towards the Impala.

**_Finis_**


End file.
